The POETICS Podcast is literary evangelism in action, extending Bainbridge Island Press's mission to connect great readers with great poetry through everything from intimate poem explorations to hour-long conversations with poets, tackling topics like gatekeeping and the Beat Generation with intellectual ambition. Beyond the episodes themselves, the podcast extends our reach from Bainbridge Island to poetry lovers across the world, building a literary community that transcends geography.
bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com (https://bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)
POETICS Podcast: Episode 48 - The Art of the Book Industry
Most writers learn the publishing industry through rumor: a bad experience relayed at a conference, a thread about an agent, a sense that the doors are locked and someone is holding the keys.
This week Ben Rockwood makes a different case. Ben is COO of Bainbridge Island Press, which means he has spent years on the side of the table writers rarely see. His argument is that almost everyone in this business is acting in good faith, and that the small fraction who aren’t get far more attention than their numbers deserve. What looks like a closed door is usually arithmetic.
We get into how the Big Five are structured, what hybrid publishers do and how to evaluate one, how a manuscript actually travels toward a yes, and what a book sells in a bookstore once it arrives. Then we talk about what running a press has taught us that no article about publishing ever did.
I also ended my intro by saying “okay now off to bed” and that…was me in a rush, and I’m too far away from my microphone to fix it. So, take it as you will.
Get full access to Bainbridge Island Press at bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe (https://bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
30 Jul 2026
POETICS Podcast: The Art of Book Composition, host Ben Rockwood
This week I hand the microphone to Ben, who comes at poetry books from the vantage of a reader and a designer. His argument is that a collection is a mixtape. You choose your listener, you choose your emotion, you choose your songs, and then you spend hours on the sequencing, because sequence is where the affection lives.
Along the way he offers the three S’s he uses to describe any book he loves (style, story, structure), a defense of Infinite Jest‘s endnotes as a tennis match, and two poetry examples worth your afternoon: Janée J. Baugher’s The Andrew Wyeth Chronicles, in which every poem is a numbered footnote, and Maggie Smith’s You Could Make This Place Beautiful, which he reads aloud twice, once as prose and once as free verse, to show you the poem hiding in the punctuation.
If you cannot describe your manuscript in a single log line, this one is for you.
Get full access to Bainbridge Island Press at bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe (https://bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
3 Jul 2026
POETICS Podcast: Poetry and Freedom of the Press
Poetry is a solitary practice with a communal spine. The page is quiet. The community around the page does not have to be.
This week, as the United States turns 250, we follow that idea across two thousand years. A famous sentence about free speech, written by a woman named Evelyn Beatrice Hall and handed by history to Voltaire. Ovid exiled to the edge of the world for a poem. Dante writing the Divine Comedy with a death sentence at his back. Nadezhda Mandelstam carrying her husband’s life work in her memory because paper was too dangerous. Anna Akhmatova’s friends becoming living manuscripts. And Lawrence Ferlinghetti, arrested in 1957 for publishing a poem called Howl, standing in an American courtroom where the First Amendment finally held the poet back.
Fair warning: I cried recording this one, and I left it in. Some episodes are about poetry. This one is about why there is any poetry left to be about.
Free zine at our Grand Old Fourth booth. Come find us.
Get full access to Bainbridge Island Press at bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe (https://bainbridgeislandpress.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
Who has been a guest on POETICS: Poetry Podcast
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Amy Wright
Pablo Neruda
Carl Sandburg
Louis Simpson
Joy Harjo
Podcast Authority Score: 7 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
14
Social presence
0
YouTube
0
Engagement
0
Host of POETICS: Poetry Podcast?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
